MOTION Amendments to Sessional Orders

23 Aug 2018 9:47 AMMichael Hart

MOTION Amendments to Sessional Orders Mr HART (Burleigh—LNP) (12.56 pm):

This is the house of the people. This is a house of debate. This is not a dictatorship, and those opposite are trying to make this parliament seem like a dictatorship. Apparently we are going to have a Business Committee. This Business Committee is going to decide what is complex and significant legislation that we debate in this place. We in this place make the laws of this state. I think all of that is going to be complex and I am damned sure it is significant. How is this all going to work? This is quite a puzzle at the end of the day.

The Leader of the House said that it is not an absolute right for members in this place to speak. I can tell members that the people who elected me put me here and gave me the right to speak in this place and they expect me to speak on anything that they direct me to speak on, and this will completely curtail that. There was an instance only on Tuesday where I wanted to speak on the Ipswich bill. It was curtailed. I could not speak on it. The vegetation management bill was curtailed. I did not get to say everything I wanted to say about that.

I absolutely agree with the member for Maiwar: when it gets down to consideration in detail, we are going to see the whole debate guillotined. We are in the habit of seeing this government come in here and give us last-minute amendments. In the near future we are going to be in a situation where we will not see an amendment and not get the opportunity to debate that amendment because the debate will just automatically finish. That is unacceptable, and it should be unacceptable to every member of this parliament. It is completely unacceptable. We have seen this government ramrod and it is treating the people of Queensland like complete idiots, and that is what they see us politicians as now. That is why we are getting bad names for ourselves. These family-friendly hours just do not work. They do not work. The people out there are laughing at us. The government is making us a laughing stock because of the things that it is doing.

This is not a dictatorship. This is a house of the people. It is a house of debate and, as a member of parliament, we should all be entitled to have our say on whatever bill or whatever motion we desire. I will not be supporting this motion at all. This is just another sign of a lazy and arrogant Labor Party that thinks it can put this dictatorship in place and fool the people of Queensland by making this a part-time parliament. The member for Glass House raised a very good point in that most of us cannot travel home at the end of the night. We cannot get home. We cannot spend time with our families, so this whole concept of family-friendly hours just does not work. I will not be supporting this motion.